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There goes the neighborhood

Official Selection at Sidewalk Film Festival, Portland Film Festival, Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival and more than a dozen festivals worldwide. Extended screening at the Hollywood Theatre at PDX.

Shot over the course of a year in rapidly changing Northeast Portland, Oregon, There goes the neighborhood distills the visual experience of gentrification into a 3-minute time-lapse sequence. It is a vivid, photographic ride.

Starting with the demolition of a century-old home, There goes the neighborhood offers evidence of some of what is lost and gained through redevelopment. It burns rubber through the construction of new luxury condominiums, and culminates in a satirical dig at the end result of gentrification.

Director’s Statement

This film started out on a whim: the house across the street from me was being torn down, and I thought it would be cool to capture the destruction in a time-lapse video, something that I might throw up on Vimeo. Once I started filming, though, I found it difficult to stop. First it was the destruction of a house built in 1907, then the razing of a decades-old willow tree that shaded the neighborhood park.

When I finally stopped filming in June of 2016, nearly a full year later, I realized that this project had the potential to say something profound about the changing nature of Portland, Oregon, as old homes and neighborhoods are leveled to make way for newcomers with money. I hope this film can serve as a time capsule of Northeast Portland in the 2010s, showing what it was, and what it was in the process of becoming.

There goes the neighborhood is a Storywise production. Directed, filmed, and edited by Dan Evans. Graphic design by Scott O’Banion. Original music composed by Steve Steckler.